This dark thriller failed to please as much as it
was
disturbing
in all its mumbo jumbo about destiny. I got a
headache watching this
meaningless
downer. Spanish director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo's
debut feature is an
absurdly pretentious thriller about those who have
what's called "the
gift,"
which means they are lucky and somehow can steal
their luck from others
for their own purposes.

In a Canary Island desert casino a bizarre game of
chance
is run
by an elderly Jewish Holocaust survivor, Sam Berg
(Max von Sydow), with
a death wish over his guilt as a survivor. This
unhappy dude is
obsessed
with luck ever since he as a child was the sole
survivor of a
concentration
camp, because his number was not picked to go to the
gas chamber. The
wealthy
players bet against each other in a ridiculous
assortment of games,
some
of which are Russian roulette type of games. Their
good luck can be
stolen
with a touch of the hand or a photograph. Sam's two
rules are that he
doesn't
want any of the players to touch him or take his
photo. Luck is viewed
as something real, that one can put their finger on
and use as a
product.
The only one Sam lets see him (he wears a hood while
playing in the
casino)
is his key employee, this dour dude named Federico
(Poncela), an
earthquake
survivor and grifter, whom Sam mentored for a
longtime but kicked him
out
and took back his gift by giving him a big hug after
a falling out. It
came about as Federico gets so cocky he thinks he
can go out on his own
and challenge Sam to be the luckiest guy in the
world.

The premise is nonsensical and made more cloudy by
a
frenetic story
that chases after disaster survivors as if they were
celebratory gods,
as it aims to keep everything unclear in the hopes
it can scam the
viewer
into buying into this hokum. It revolves around
Federico seeking
revenge
on Sam, whom he has this intense love/hate
relationship with, as he
tries
to find a lucky soul to compete against him in one
of those
Western-like
showdown scenes.

When a jumbo passenger airliner crashes and all
237
passengers and
crew die, the sole survivor is a wanted bank robber
named Tomas
(Sbaraglia).
Federico declares he has "the gift" and teams with
the fugitive to play
those extreme games of chance. Federico introduces
the naive lucky one
into his dark world of sicko players and preps him
for a chance to face
Sam and make his fortune. Police investigator Sara
(Monica Lopez) is
added
to the suspense, as she's obsessed with catching
Tomas and is willing
to
play the extreme games in order to get her prey
(Don't ask why!). The
red-headed
Sara is also a disaster survivor and a possessor of
"the gift," who
survived
a car crash with some wicked chest scars. Her
husband and daughter died
in that crash.

Tomas' first game has him as a winner. He wagers
his finger
to see
if he can win a house and a car. The players are
blindfolded and
treacle
is poured on their heads. The winner is the one the
insect lands on.
This
game reminded me when I was eleven and would go into
a candy store with
some friends and order egg creams and we would each
place a lump of
sugar
on the table in front of us and then fold our hands
under the table.
The
first fly to land on the sugar cube in front of the
individual, meant
the
others would have to pay for the lucky guy's soda.
What I'm suggesting,
is that this premise is geared for an adolescent
mentality.

One of the more bloody games involves the players
running
full-speed,
blindfolded and with their hands bound, through a
dense wooded forest
to
see who is "lucky" enough to avoid running into a
tree and getting
knocked
silly. Tomas loses to a bullfighter named Alejandro
(Dechent) who never
got gored in his career and Ana, the ex-girlfriend
of Tomas, is now in
the possession of Sam, as he plans to kill her. But
even though he's a
loser, Federico arranges for Tomas to play Sam to
win Ana back. Even
though
Tomas doesn't love her, he gets Fedrico to put
himself up as the stake.
In the final chapter there's a gun with five live
bullets, and in this
extreme game Sam and Tomas will take turns firing
one shot at a time at
each other before there's a winner standing
alive.

This stylish puzzler is not worth solving. Its
thrills
don't emanate
from a sensible story. But if it's only the dazzle
in the Pulp Fiction
way of filming that catches your fancy, then at
least you won't lose
any
sleep trying to figure out the deeper meaning of
this tale--there is
none.
On this amusement park ride everyone ends up just
where it started, as
the film opens and closes at Sam's joint in
Tamagana.